Many sports events take place in the evening or night for commercial reasons. Such events can draw larger audiences, both within a stadium in which the event is hosted and remote attendance through media, e.g. televised, broadcasts. To facilitate such sports events at such times of day, the arena or stadium in which the sports event takes place is typically artificially illuminated by a stadium lighting system in which a plurality of luminaires are aimed at different locations of the pitch to achieve a desired illumination profile across the pitch, e.g. a substantially homogeneous illumination of the pitch area. To this end, the luminaires are typically distributed across the stadium, e.g. positioned in support frames mounted on masts in the corners of the stadium or individually mounted along the stands and seating areas of the stadium and aimed at a specific location of the pitch as specified in a so-called light plan. Such a light plan can specify the stadium location in which the luminaire is to be mounted and an aiming direction or pitch location at which the luminaire is to be aimed at the pitch such that an installer can correctly install the luminaires by consultation of the light plan.
However, hosting such sports events under artificial lighting is not without problems. In particular, the players on the pitch may experience glare when looking into a luminaire directed at a pitch location in which the player is present. In order to reduce the risk of such glare, a luminaire may include light shaping elements such as reflectors and lenses that are shaped to reduce direct lamp glare. An example of such a luminaire is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,730,521.
However, even when using such luminaire designs, it is difficult to avoid glare altogether, e.g. when a player directly looks into a luminaire. Such glare may interfere with the player's ability to intercept a moving object such as a ball and may therefore compromise the quality and/or fairness of the sports event. For example, a player in a ballgame such as football, soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis, cricket and so on may be unable to control or catch a ball having a trajectory such that the ball approaches the player along a trajectory that coincides with an aiming direction of one or more of the luminaires of the stadium lighting system, which may cause glare for the player. Hence, there exists a need to further reduce glare for sportsmen on a pitch.